


The Romance of Winter

by veeagainst



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First Kiss, Hogwarts, M/M, Marauders, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:49:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veeagainst/pseuds/veeagainst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius Black doesn't know what flirting is. Remus Lupin has to teach him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Romance of Winter

**Author's Note:**

> This is fluffy fluffy fluff, but it was fun to write.

**10:36 am**

Sirius brought a snowball into the Common Room, magically charmed not to melt.  He didn’t quite understand the charm’s full effects, so when he launched it at Remus’s face, rather than crumbling and spilling cold snow all down his friend’s jumper, it stayed perfectly solid and blacked both his eyes. 

            “Hab you eber,” Remus demanded, holding Peter’s sleeve to his nose to stop blood from spilling down his face, “thob aboub adydig--”

            “You sound terrible,” Sirius said breezily.  “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”  He waved his wand and Remus’s nose stopped bleeding with an audible, “urghk” noise.  “Feel better?”

            Remus lowered Peter’s sleeve and picked up the history book he’d been reading before Sirius had so rudely interrupted him.  “Go to hell, Black.”

            Peter eyed his sleeve apprehensively, then held it out to Sirius.  “Clean this?”

            Sirius just glared at the two of them, doing homework while the sky worked itself into a magnificent blizzard, then stalked away to sulk.

 

**10:54 am**

            The snowball hit Sirius squarely in the back of the head and slipped down his shirt, dripping wetly all the way down his spine and into his trousers. 

            “Aaaaayeaaagh!” he responded eloquently, spinning around and flailing his arms.

            Everyone else in the Great Hall was looking at an empty space near the massive double doors.

            “That Lupin,” someone next to Sirius said as he frantically clawed at his neck and back.  “He looks like you could knock him down with a deep breath, but he’s got quite an arm.”

 

**11:36 am**

            Professor Slughorn raised his wand and waved it over the bubbling blue potion before him.  “NEWTs are in just a few months now, and so we will be dedicating this term to learning the most difficult potions that most of you will ever work with.  This particular potion here is – what are you doing, Mr. Black?”

            Sirius coughed, dropped his wand on the floor, and bent down to retrieve it.  “Just giving Remus his book, sir.”

            Slughorn looked disconcerted, gazing between the two of them, but returned to his explanation.  A table away from Sirius, Remus opened up the book that Sirius had just handed him.

            “The entire Russian Magical Army suddenly found itself standing in the wilds of Siberia, sent there by a terrible hex from General Nellis,” the book narrated in a quiet, squeaky voice.  Slughorn stopped speaking again, frowning, and the class looked at the table that Remus shared with James.  “Unfortunately, they landed in the most severe blizzard ever recorded.”  A handful of snow and icicles exploded out of the book, most of them hitting Remus in the face. 

            James dove under the desk, Slughorn snapped, “Now, really, Mr. Black!” and beside Sirius, Lily Evans murmured, “The Children’s Interactive Battle Series, eh?”  When Sirius nodded, she grinned and said, “Very clever.  Too bad more of it didn’t hit Potter.”

 

**12:49 pm**

            Sirius wondered how many times in his life he had cleaned McGonagall’s office.  He replaced the golden statue of Godric Gryffindor upon its pedestal and sighed, imagining what delicious things the castle elves had made for lunch. 

            Behind him, the door opened.  He turned around; Remus stood in the doorway, his hands behind his back. 

            “Oh no,” Sirius said, backing into the desk.  “I’m not falling for this.”

            “McGonagall said you were free to go,” Remus said.  “Transfiguration is in ten minutes and she expects you in class.”  He smiled at Sirius, showing his teeth, and held out his right hand.  “Truce?”

            Sirius took the outstretched hand and Remus shook it, then continued to hold it and smile.  Sirius’s heart sped up accordingly and he wondered if it was really the moment for reconciliation.  He said, “Sorry about the--”

            Remus shook his head.  “Don’t worry about it.”  He put his other arm around Sirius’s waist and drew him into an awkward hug.  “All’s forgiven, right?”

            “Right,” Sirius said, a bit out of breath.  He settled his arms around Remus’s waist and Remus leaned in very close to him.  “Remus?”

            “Hmm?” Remus asked softly.  He chewed on his lower lip.  “Am I being too… do you want me to stop touching you?”

            Sirius’s brain seemed to have deserted him.  “Uh…”

            “I don’t want to scare you,” Remus added quickly.  “It’s just that I couldn’t help noticing how you were flirting with me…”

            “I was flirting with you?” Sirius asked, barely able to string together words into coherent sentences.  “Was I?  Flirting?  With you?”

            Remus’s response was to shove a handful of half-melted snow down Sirius’s trousers and run for it.

 

**1:26 pm**

            Sirius was not doing well in Transfiguration class.

            One of the windows to the classroom had been opened because of the smell of burning feathers after Sirius had transfigured his macaw a little too enthusiastically.

            The room was, therefore, very cold.

            Sirius’s trousers were very, very wet.

 

**1:36 pm**

            Sirius’s trouser situation was not getting any better.

            His left buttock seemed to have frozen to his chair.

            Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell.  He couldn’t feel anything below his waist.

 

**1:38 pm**

            Professor McGonagall was mad at him again.  “Normally you’re one of my most accomplished students,” she snapped at him, “but today you are doing terribly!”

 

**3:36 pm**

            “They ought to have cancelled Care of Magical Creatures,” Peter grumbled as they attempted to make their way across the grounds to the paddock where the NEWT class was going to learn about the proper care of adolescent dragons.  “I’m freezing to death already!”

            Sirius restrained himself from killing Peter by shoving him into a snow drift.  Then he told himself that he was exercising extraordinary restraint. 

“Maybe the lesson won’t go on too long,” Remus said.  Sirius avoided eye contact.  “After all, I can barely see where I’m going.”

“Did Evans really say that she wished I’d gotten snow in my face?” James asked Sirius for the tenth time.  “Are you sure that she wasn’t joking?”

“She wasn’t joking,” Sirius bit out through gritted teeth.  “She hates you, Prongs.  Accept it.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Remus said, glancing unnecessarily at Sirius.  “She’s always flirting with you.”

“I think  _you_ ,” Sirius said, “do not  _understand_  the meaning of the word ‘ _flirt_ ’.”

“Oh, I  _do_ ,” Remus replied mysteriously.  He kicked some snow onto Sirius’s robes.  “You going to get me back?”

“Nothing so petty,” Sirius said.  Peter reappeared at his side, soaked and panting, and Sirius shoved him into the drift again, then grabbed Remus’s arm and flung him into the drift too.  The real problem was that Remus managed to clamp his legs around Sirius’s as he fell and the three of them wound up as a flailing, sopping, freezing mass of limbs.

“Honestly Potter,” said Lily, passing with a group of attractive girls, “can’t you even be nice to your friends?”

 

**5:15pm**

            “Well, they didn’t cancel the lesson,” said James, attempting to melt the icicles out of his eyebrows with his wand.  “Bastards.”

            Remus shivered silently beside Sirius, his blue-tinged hands wrapped around a large mug of hot chocolate.  Sirius was all too aware that their legs kept brushing together.

            “I want to die,” Peter said morosely.  “I’ll never be warm again.”

            Sirius tore savagely into a chicken leg and said, “Join the club.” 

            Across from him, James’s left eyebrow disappeared with a faint, “Pop!”

           

**7:48 pm**

            “Snowball fight!  Gryffindor vs. Slytherin!”

            Those words were the rallying cry that sent the entirety of Gryffindor House out of its common room and down to the cold, dark grounds.  Wrapped in winter robes and wearing the thickest gloves they had, they scooped out snowballs enthusiastically and flung them at friend and foe alike.  The snow continued to fall thickly, coating heads and hats in minutes. 

Sirius spent half an hour pelting snowballs at various cousins while James trailed him, providing covering fire.  Then James disappeared to act as bodyguard to Lily.  Peter was snogging some Ravenclaw girl behind a massive wall of snow; Sirius stumbled upon them while looking for Remus (but trying hard not to appear as if he was looking for Remus), and had to duck back out into the blizzard before they saw him and asked who he was looking for. 

 

**8:20 pm**

Remus was nowhere to be found.  Sirius headed back into the castle, not quite sure why he was leaving behind the snowstorm, and followed a trail of wet footprints up the stairs, down the halls, all the way to Gryffindor Tower.  He gave the password to the Fat Lady and slipped inside, shaking snow out of his hair and clothes in a very dog-like manner. 

“Remus?” he called nervously, looking into all the shadowy corners of the room for an ambush.  “You here?”

No answer.  Sirius walked up the stairs to their bedroom and pushed the door open. 

Beside Remus’s bed, there were two boots, in twin puddles of melted snow.  Sirius flung apart the dark red curtains.

“Found you!”

            “Were you looking for me?” Remus asked, laying his book down on his lap and raising an eyebrow.

            “I… well… no.”

            “Yet you found me.”

            Sirius glared at him.  “I wasn’t flirting.”

            Remus suddenly moved towards him, cupping his face in his hand and kissing Sirius on the lips.  The kiss seemed to last an eternity, Remus’s fingers warm against Sirius’s cold cheek, his mouth hot on Sirius’s freezing lips.  When Remus drew back, Sirius stared at him in wonder. 

            “Are you sure?” Remus asked.  He sounded breathless; some of the snow from Sirius’s hair had fallen into his fringe and his cheeks were flushed as if he’d just come in from the cold.

            Sirius made a convulsive movement forward, and Remus caught his hand and said, “Wait, take off your boots before you get snow on the bed.”

            “Right, boots, off,” Sirius said shakily.  He yanked one off but couldn’t get the other, sliding off the bed, standing up and hopping on one foot until Remus stood too.  Remus bent down and undid the laces, helping Sirius take the boot off and grinning.  Sirius dropped the boots beside Remus’s and pushed him onto the bed, kissing him furiously.

            “Wait!” Remus managed against Sirius’s mouth.  “One second!  Let me charm the door shut!”

            Sirius shifted aside so that Remus could stand and flopped onto his stomach on the bed.  After a few seconds, he heard Remus say a spell; a few seconds more, and hands were on his arms and back, rolling him over.  Remus’s mouth pressed against his again.  Sirius parted his lips as Remus pressed a hand up under his shirt, against the flat part of his stomach.

            Something wet and cold landed on Sirius’s stomach and started to melt down his sides and into his shirt.  Against his mouth, Remus was laughing.  “ _I_  was flirting, you know.”

            Sirius groaned.  “I hate you.”

            “No, you don’t.”

            “No, I don’t.”

            “Knew it.”

            “I guess I’ll just have to take my shirt off.”

            “Mm, guess so.  Are your trousers wet?”

            “Don’t know.”

            “They look a bit wet to me.”

            “…because you just mashed snow into them.”

            “Whoops, so I did.”

            Sirius grabbed under the bed and found a half-empty bucket of rapidly melting snow.  He picked it up and upended it all over Remus.  “Oh no, looks like we need to get you out of those wet clothes.”

 

**10:45 pm**

            James banged on the door again.  “I can’t believe this!” he said to Peter.  “All I want are some damned dry clothes, and we’re locked out!”

 


End file.
